


But Very Wise Was He

by cenotaphs



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphs/pseuds/cenotaphs
Summary: Death and love.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 165





	But Very Wise Was He

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop writing them, help. 
> 
> Title is, of course, from any iteration of the song Nature Boy.

They’ve been locked in this cell for days. Maybe a week.

Their captors know their secret by now, which means only that their captors will have to die, down to the last man, so it’s to their own bad luck that they have already killed Joe and Nicky more than once.

It’s not the first time the two of them have gone through this. Joe has lost count. It must be in the dozens by now, this exact scenario. Captured, questioned, tortured, together or within sight and hearing of each other. It’s a special kind of hell. The hardest memories to leave behind, the most persistent nightmares for them both.

There’s no _true_ fear in it: they will not die here, and these men are too primitive and poorly connected to ever capture them for good. Andy and Nile will come for them, or they will break free. That is inevitable.

Still. The hell of seeing Nicky dying, being unable to hold on to him as it happens, is the worst kind of trauma. They are so close. Joe can nudge their knees together. But his wrists are chained over his head, and so he cannot touch.

This time Nicky dies slowly, so slowly that their tormentors leave them alone. So slowly Joe has to grit his teeth and force himself to keep watching.

Nicky watches him back, a small smile on his face as the blood drains from his chest with every heartbeat.

Joe knows he’ll be back – one day they will both be mortal again, but it won’t be in a circumstance like this, caused by ignorant men like these – so he scowls halfheartedly at his love’s bleary smile. 

“What are you grinning at? You’d think a knife wound tickled.”

Nicky just smiles all the bigger, his eyes half-hooded, his face grey with approaching death. “I was thinking,” he murmurs, “about how wonderful it is.”

“Wonderful.” Joe wants to tease, to joke, to make light of this. But he watches the gloss start to dull in Nicky’s eyes, and sometimes he hates the world so much.

“I was reborn just yesterday,” Nicky goes on, pained and flat but Joe can always understand him. “You were the first face I saw when I came to life. And now you will be the last thing I see as I die. A whole life lived in one day, and you have been here for all of it." 

He draws a sharp, quick, liquid breath as blood fills his lungs. "I am blessed.”

Joe is thought to be the poet of the two of them, but Nicky doesn’t need poetry: his way of seeing the world is sometimes so beautiful that Joe feels like a blabbering child in comparison.

Nicky dies before Joe can bring himself to answer, and he’s left with stark silence until Nicky draws another breath.

He thinks, in the quiet, about that idea. About how many lives they have lived with each other. How many times Nicky has leaned over him as life returned to him, loving and relieved, and how often Nicky’s wide eyes are the last things he sees before he dies.

They have had centuries together. In Nicky’s view they have also had many, many lives full of nothing but each other. By God Joe hates this constant violence sometimes, hates the pain and the torture and the way it always finds them in every time and place they go to. But it’s beautiful. Through Nicky’s eyes, even their own endless deaths can be beautiful.

Joe wants to weep. He wants to throw off his chains and tear apart every man who has bloodied his lover. He wants to write songs, to sketch Nicky’s death, to celebrate it while he despises it.

But they are caught, so instead he simply gets to his knees, stretching his arms awkwardly just so that he can be sure when Nicky’s eyes open again, Joe is the first thing he’ll see.


End file.
